Chapter 9
Confronting the Soviets: the Cold War navy (1945–1975)
The sine wave that traced the periodic increase and contraction of the U.S. Navy reached an unprecedented apogee in the fall of 1945. Having entered World War II with eleven active battleships and seven aircraft carriers, the U.S. Navy ended the war with 120 battleships and cruisers and nearly one hundred aircraft carriers (including escort carriers). Counting the smaller landing craft, the U.S. Navy listed an astonishing sixty-five thousand vessels on its register of warships and had more than four million men and women in uniform. It was more than twice as large as all the rest of the navies of the world combined.
The sine curve did ease downward after 1945. In the eighteen months after the end of the war, the navy processed out 3.5 million officers and enlisted personnel who returned to civilian life and their families, going back to work or attending college on the new G.I. Bill. In addition thousands of ships were scrapped or mothballed, assigned to what was designated as the National Defense Reserve Fleet and tied up in long rows at navy yards from California to Virginia. Though the navy boasted only about a thousand ships on active service by the end of 1946, that was still more than twice as many as before the war. The contraction was less draconian than after previous wars because of the almost immediate emergence of what has come to be called the Cold War: a forty-year period of tension and rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though the two superpowers never actually fought one another, they did participate in a number of hot wars through surrogates. The fact that, after 1949, both sides possessed nuclear weapons raised the stakes in this rivalry to a chilling dimension.
Defense unification and deterrence
Despite near universal recognition that unified command was essential to military success, the United States had continued to operate throughout World War II under a bureaucratic system in which the War and Navy Departments were separate branches of government. That archaic system was finally changed in 1947 with passage of the National Defense Act, which created a Department of Defense, with the army, navy, and the newly created air force all subordinate elements of a unified command system. That did not end the squabbling among the services for resources, however, and the most disruptive of these squabbles erupted in 1949, when Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson decided to halt the construction of the navy’s new 60,000-ton aircraft carrier, prospectively named the United States, and use the money to build a fleet of new long-range bombers for the air force: the B-36.
Johnson’s decision alarmed the navy leadership, for the United States had been designed to accommodate aircraft that could carry nuclear weapons, which would give the navy a role in strategic deterrence. The cancellation of the United States therefore appeared to be not merely a choice between weapons systems but a decision to make the air force primarily responsible for deterring Soviet aggression in the nuclear era. The vice chief of naval operations, Admiral Arthur Radford, testified before Congress that the B-36 was a “billion dollar blunder,” and when Chief of Naval Operations Louis Denfeld endorsed Radford’s criticism, Johnson dismissed him. This episode, dubbed “the Revolt of the Admirals,” created a political firestorm. After a lengthy investigation Congress criticized the manner of Denfeld’s dismissal (though not the decision itself) and added a new supercarrier to the next year’s defense budget. That ensured the navy a role in strategic deterrence.
Within a decade the navy’s deterrent mission was greatly enlarged by the construction of a new class of nuclear-powered, missile-firing submarines (SSBNs), colloquially called “boomers.” These remarkable boats (submarines are generally called boats rather than ships) were possible due in large part to the fierce commitment of Rear Admiral (later Vice Admiral) Hyman G. Rickover, who not only supervised the design and construction of the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, in 1955 but also made nuclear submarines a kind of personal fiefdom. The Nautilus was an attack submarine, which meant that, like its conventional predecessors, its primary weapon was the torpedo. Then, in late 1959, the United States produced the first submarine that could fire a Polaris missile while submerged, the USS George Washington. The Nautilus could sink a ship, but the George Washington could incinerate a city. During the next eight years a total of forty-one such submarines joined the navy’s arsenal.
Over the ensuing quarter century American ballistic missile submarines became larger, faster, and quieter. In 1981 the United States launched the first Ohio-class submarine, which was more than three times the size of the George Washington. The missiles too became larger, with a longer range and with multiple, independently targetable warheads. In 1972 the Poseidon missile replaced the Polaris, and in 1979 the Trident replaced the Poseidon. The boomers remained almost continually at sea; to do that they had two crews, a Blue crew and a Gold crew, that swapped places after each cruise. These men (and they were all men until 2011) remained submerged for months at a time, sleeping in bunks between the missile tubes and living in a fully self-sustained artificial environment.
By the late 1970s the United States had come to rely on a so-called triad of deterrence platforms: land-based bombers and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), both under the supervision of the air force, and the navy’s fleet of SSBNs. While deterring a Soviet missile strike remained the primary mission of all of America’s services throughout the Cold War, the United States also confronted a series of smaller wars around the world.
The Korean War
Among the several geographical oddities that resulted from the end of World War II was the division of Korea along the 38th parallel. Initially that demarcation was no more than an administrative convenience to denote where either Russian or American units would accept the surrender of the occupying Japanese. As in Europe, however, once the Red Army moved into an area, it showed a stubborn unwillingness to depart, and by 1949 the two halves of Korea had become, in effect, separate countries.
On June 25, 1950, the Soviet-supplied army of North Korea crossed the 38th parallel in the first overt military aggression of the Cold War era. Facing weak opposition, the North Koreans quickly drove southward, pinning South Korean forces and their outnumbered American allies into a defensive toehold around the port city of Pusan. President Harry S. Truman successfully organized support from the United Nations, which had been chartered in 1945 to replace the ineffective League of Nations, but it was clear from the start that the United States would take the lead in repelling this aggression. U.S. Navy forces, including a task force built around the carrier USS Valley Forge, struck at the North Korean supply lines, but the most effective response would be an amphibious landing behind North Korean lines. General Douglas MacArthur argued for a landing at Inchon, the seaport for the South Korean capital of Seoul. Though most senior officers feared that a landing at Inchon was too risky due to the narrow ship channel into the harbor and thirty-foot tides, MacArthur’s ebullient confidence carried the day.
10. The Korean War
On September 15, 1950, a U.S. Navy task force threaded its way up the narrow Flying Fish Channel off Inchon at high tide to deposit U.S. Marines on three “beaches” that were actually sections of an urban waterfront. In effect the marines charged ashore into a city. The surprised and outnumbered North Koreans were quickly routed, and the successful landing completely reversed the momentum of the war. The North Korean Army abandoned the Pusan perimeter, and the Americans and South Koreans pursued them all the way back to the 38th parallel. Within weeks the official objective of repelling North Korean aggression had been achieved. At this point, however, MacArthur sought—and received—permission to continue the war northward in order to unify the Korean peninsula.
In November, as American and South Korean forces approached the Yalu River, which divided North Korea from China, the Chinese signaled that they would not tolerate the presence of hostile forces on their border, and on November 27 eight corps of the Chinese Army crossed the Yalu. In fierce winter fighting around the Chosin Reservoir, the U.S. Marines fought their way southward to avoid being encircled, and by December the Chinese had pushed south of the 38th parallel. MacArthur insisted that the war must now be extended with a naval blockade of China, the bombing of Chinese cities, and a diversionary attack on the mainland by Chinese Nationalist forces on Taiwan. The Truman administration rejected these proposals, but they found favor with Truman’s political foes in Congress. When MacArthur wrote a letter to the Republican leadership that appeared to endorse their criticism of the president, Truman dismissed him.
The war continued for two more years. General Matthew Ridgway assumed command in MacArthur’s stead, and forces under his command gradually fought their way back to the vicinity of the 38th parallel. In July 1953 the two sides signed an armistice that made the cease-fire line a de facto boundary, as it remains today.
The Korean War ended in a stalemate, yet American forces, supported by troops from South Korea and other United Nations members, succeeded in repelling the first cross-border invasion by communist forces during the Cold War. That encouraged American lawmakers to continue support of a robust peacetime navy, and of military forces generally. Whereas U.S. military spending in 1950 had totaled $141 billion, for the rest of the 1950s it averaged over $350 billion per year.
The Middle East
The overall architecture of American and Soviet rivalry influenced, and even defined, virtually every aspect of American foreign and defense policy in the Cold War years. Even when the issue at hand had little to do with the Soviet Union, every political and military dispute from 1949 onward was likely to be viewed through the prism of how it affected the East-West balance of power. This was particularly true in Europe, where Germany was divided into rival occupation zones and where the United States sponsored the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to present a common front to deter Soviet aggression.
It was also true in the Middle East, which in the immediate postwar years was destabilized by two circumstances. The first was the establishment in 1948 of the Jewish state of Israel in the former British mandate of Palestine, a decision that bred resentment among both the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors. The United States strongly backed the creation of the state of Israel and applauded the 1948 Israeli victory over the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria when those nations banded together in an effort to eliminate it. The other issue that defined Middle East politics and diplomacy was the West’s continued reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf region. Though the United States was less dependent on Middle East oil than either Britain or Japan, it maintained a policy of ensuring access for its allies.
In 1950 the United States established a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean—the Sixth Fleet—generally composed of one or two aircraft carriers plus a dozen or so cruisers and destroyers. Throughout the Cold War years it constituted the strongest naval force in the region. Early on, however, it became evident that having the biggest fleet did not result in the ability to control events, especially within the complex environment of the Middle East.
In 1956 Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser decided to nationalize the French- and British-owned Suez Canal. When British, French, and Israeli forces orchestrated a coordinated attack on Egypt to reclaim the canal for their investors, it was not clear what, if anything, the United States should do about it. Under the direction of President Dwight Eisenhower, U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke directed Vice Admiral Charles R. Brown, then commanding the Sixth Fleet, to “prepare for imminent hostilities.” Brown’s reply underscored the uncertainty of his situation: “Am prepared for imminent hostilities, but which side are we on?” Eventually a UN resolution supported by the United States called on all sides to withdraw, and Egypt assumed control of the canal in 1958.
That same year Lebanon’s president, Kamil Shamun, requested American support to suppress unrest in Beirut. U.S. Marines landed on Beirut’s beaches south of the city amid surprised and amused holiday tourists, but this comic opera beginning nearly led to hostilities between the Americans and the Lebanese Army, which resented the intrusion. In the end cooler heads prevailed, though the event demonstrated once again that naval power was not a magic wand that could resolve all complex issues.
This was evident as well during the so-called Six Day War in June 1967 between Israel and her Arab neighbors, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The United States was again supportive when Israel’s superbly trained army easily won the land war. In the midst of the fighting, however, Israeli air forces attacked a U.S. Navy intelligence-gathering vessel, the USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean, killing thirty-four Americans and wounding 171 others. Despite suspicions, then and later, that the Israelis had targeted the Liberty deliberately in order to protect the security of their military communications, the Lyndon Johnson administration readily accepted a subsequent Israeli explanation of mistaken identity, mainly because the United States did not want to create a rift with Israel.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
The use of naval power proved more effective closer to home. In the early fall of 1962 the Soviet Union placed intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Informed of the buildup, President John F. Kennedy determined to stop it by imposing what he called a “naval quarantine”—essentially a blockade—of Cuba. His decision was a middle ground between those of his advisers who argued for an air attack to destroy the missiles and those who argued for opening negotiations. There was substantial risk in choosing a blockade strategy, for it created the possibility—even the likelihood—that U.S. and Soviet ships would confront one another face-to-face. In addition, while a blockade might prevent more missiles from coming into Cuba, it could not remove the missiles that were already there. Still, Kennedy believed it provided the right combination of forcefulness and restraint.
For thirteen days the world all but held its collective breath as the crisis played itself out. On October 27 a Soviet vessel, the Groznyy, refused to obey the order of an American destroyer to stop and be inspected. After several tense hours the American destroyer fired several warning shots past the Groznyy, which finally caused her to stop. Eventually the Soviet ship reversed course and retreated to the quarantine line. In the end the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba.
A noteworthy aspect of this crisis was the extent to which navy ships were able to remain in continuous communication not only with the task force commanders but also with policymakers. In the nineteenth century captains at sea had been all but sovereign, making decisions not only as ship commanders but also as virtual policymakers. Now, in an age of swift radio communications, the president of the United States could personally monitor the individual twists and turns of a destroyer engaged in a delicate confrontation with a potential enemy.
The Vietnam War, 1965–1974
The dominance of the Cold War paradigm over most U.S. policy decisions also contributed to America’s star-crossed involvement in Vietnam. Though President Kennedy had sent thousands of military advisers to the pro-Western government of South Vietnam to aid in its fight with communist insurgents, it was an incident at sea that triggered active U.S. participation. In August 1964 two U.S. Navy destroyers operating off communist North Vietnam in the Tonkin Gulf reported that they had been attacked by North Vietnamese PT boats. A few nights later the captain of the USS Maddox reported a second attack. Though there is some uncertainty whether the second attack occurred at all, President Johnson asked Congress to give him broad powers to protect American security interests in the area. On August 10 Congress quickly and overwhelmingly approved what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
The war thus begun eventually lasted nine years and cost more than 210,000 American casualties, including 58,209 killed. In that war the U.S. Navy had three primary missions: carriers operating on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin launched air strikes against targets in North Vietnam; navy ships along the South Vietnamese coast sought to interdict communist supply routes; and small U.S. Navy gunboats, both armored and unarmored, patrolled the labyrinth of waterways known collectively as the Mekong Delta.
In all these efforts the ambiguities of fighting in the midst of a civil war in a distant country with a harsh climate and unfamiliar culture frustrated American operators. Pilots of strike aircraft found that the rules of engagement severely restricted their freedom of action in selecting targets. Then too the loss of even a few U.S. planes on these missions often put their pilots into the hands of the North Vietnamese government, and that gave the North Vietnamese disproportionate leverage in subsequent peace negotiations.
U.S. Navy skippers charged with patrolling the South Vietnamese coast in what was dubbed Operation MARKET TIME found it all but impossible to tell friend from foe among the hundreds of wooden junks and sampans. Much of the inshore work was conducted by eighty-four small (fifty-foot) patrol craft officially dubbed PCFs (patrol craft, fast) but which everyone called Swift Boats. Divided into five coastal squadrons, they patrolled the lengthy coast of South Vietnam from the 17th parallel to Cape Camau in the Gulf of Thailand. Stopping scores of small fishing vessels every day was both frustrating and dispiriting and also bred resentment among those who were searched.
The third navy theater of operations during the Vietnam War was in the treacherous Mekong Delta. In this flat and featureless plain of some fifteen thousand square miles, the southward-flowing Mekong River breaks into four outlets connected by scores of canals and small waterways. The Vietnamese communists (Viet Cong or VC in the American parlance) used the marshy swamps and thick foliage of the Delta as a sanctuary. To disrupt those sanctuaries and to interdict enemy communications, the U.S. Navy initiated Operation GAME WARDEN. As off the coast, the navy relied on scores of small, light, fiberglass-hulled vessels called PBRs (patrol boat, river), which spent most of their time stopping and searching suspicious vessels. Often their suspicions were justified. From 1966 to 1968 the PBR sailors of Operation GAME WARDEN engaged in an average of more than two firefights a day. For heavier action the navy used specially modified landing craft that were heavily armored, and which were dubbed “monitors” in a tribute to Ericsson’s Civil War innovation. Despite constant patrols and frequent engagements, the U.S. Navy never quite succeeded in eliminating the Viet Cong threat from the Delta.
All in all, though the U.S. Navy’s nine-year experience in Vietnam was marked by many examples of individual heroism and sacrifice, it was also frustrating and often dispiriting. The war ended not on the battlefield but at a conference table. The Paris Peace Accords of January 1973 guaranteed the right of South Vietnam to choose its own government, though in fact the North Vietnamese and their allies inside South Vietnam toppled that government almost immediately, and by 1975 Vietnam had become a unified and communist country.
U.S. Navy culture
The years of war in Vietnam were also marked by social upheavals at home. Opposition to the war, limited at first but stronger as the war lengthened, was part of a new cultural dynamic. America fractured over the war, with older citizens generally supporting it while younger citizens opposed it. Protests were ubiquitous on college campuses, and they eventually led to violence, most notably at Kent State University in May 1970, when National Guard forces killed four students and wounded nine. At the same time, the United States was also roiled by the impact of the civil rights movement. President Johnson had signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act less than a month before the Tonkin Gulf incident, and over the ensuing decade protests against the war and protests for civil rights often became blurred.
These social currents affected the U.S. Navy as well. On one level there was a divide between older service members, especially the chief petty officers, who tended to be traditionalists, and younger servicemen, including the junior officers, who welcomed change. Like the nation at large, the navy had serious racial issues. Black servicemen were often given menial jobs and were disproportionately subjected to nonjudicial punishment called Captain’s Mast. In 1971 more than a hundred black sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk held a protest meeting that blew up into a full-fledged race riot. A year later, on board the USS Constellation, fifty or so black sailors staged a sit-in strike on the mess decks.
It was partly in recognition of these problems that President Richard Nixon appointed Admiral Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt as chief of naval operations. Zumwalt had served effectively as the commander of naval forces in Vietnam, but his place in history derives largely from his service as CNO (1970–74). In that capacity he issued more than a hundred “Z-grams,” messages addressed to all navy personnel that virtually transformed the institution. Some of these addressed weighty issues such as racial discrimination (Z-gram 66, issued in December 1970) and opportunities for women (Z-gram 116, issued in August 1972). Others dealt with more mundane subjects, such as allowing sailors to grow sideburns and mustaches, or establishing a more liberal liberty policy. As a result Zumwalt became a lightning rod for disagreements between traditionalists and reformers in the U.S. Navy of the late twentieth century. His reforms stood, however, and even the traditionalists came to accept them as essential, especially after Nixon abolished the draft in 1973, creating the all-volunteer military.
The Cold War was not over. U.S. Navy planners continued to base their assessments, their budget requests, and their force structure on a possible confrontation with the Soviet Union. But significant and historic changes were taking place in Moscow too.